Directors and Institutional Placing

July 23, 2009

Directors and Institutional Placing

West African Diamonds is pleased to announce that it has raised £650,000 before expenses, through the placing of 21,666,675 new ordinary shares of 1 pence (‘Placing Shares’) with Directors of the Company and institutional investors at a price of 3p. The funds will be used to expand production at West African Diamonds’ Bomboko alluvial diamond mine in Guinea and as working capital.

The Placing has been performed under existing share authorities, and the Placing Shares equate to approximately 24% of the enlarged issued share capital. West African Diamonds Directors, John Teeling, Alex Van Zyl and James Finn have participated in the Placing and have subscribed for 1,000,000, 1,000,000 and 666,667 Placing Shares respectively.

Following admission to trading on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange of the Placing Shares, which will rank pari passu in all respects with the existing ordinary shares, West African Diamonds’ total issued and voting share capital will comprise of 89,947,519 Ordinary Shares.

Subsequent to the Placing, The Directors of the Company will have the following shareholdings:

No. of shares

% of total enlarged share capital

John Teeling

2,015,862

2.24

Alex Van Zyl

1,125,000

1.25

James Finn

1,547,394

1.72

J Campbell

125,000

0.14

Application will be made for the Placing Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM and it is expected that admission will take place on 6 August 2009.

John Teeling, Chairman of West African Diamonds, commented:

“In difficult financial markets, the support of institutional investors and West African Diamonds Directors is a sign of confidence. The funds will be used to complete and commission a substantial expansion of our Bomboko mine in Guinea.”